The Rebus Approach to Accessibility & Inclusivity

In part one of our series on accessibility, we covered what accessibility is and why it’s important. Now, learn about what we’re doing to ensure accessibility for the open textbooks we support.

How Do We Ensure Accessibility & Inclusivity of the Open Textbooks Created with Rebus Support?

The Rebus Community is committed to ensuring that all Open Textbooks coming through the Rebus process go through (and pass!) an accessibility audit, and indeed that we build accessibility right into the authoring process.

Currently we are using an in-progress open textbook, Financial Planning in Public Policy, as a pilot/test case for developing an accessibility audit on Rebus Community supported books.

The idea behind what we are proposing is to:

1. make sure that authors making Open Textbooks are aware of good accessibility practice from the start of the process
2. help them easily implement good accessibility practice
3. provide a standard accessibility audit process after an Open Textbook is created (possibly with some tools associated)
4. provide a mechanism to “fix” accessibility problems found in the audit process
5. have an “accessibility stamp of approval” for projects that have successfully passed the accessibility audit

Collaborators will be developing an accessibility checklist, which we will then apply to the book, along with figuring out next steps for what such a process should look like.

This process is being undertaken in partnership with the Inclusive Design Research Center at OCAD University and the University of Washington. Follow updates on this topic on the project post in the Rebus Community forum.

For more on accessibility and universal design, check out these resources:

Pressbooks EDU Guide chapter on Accessibility and Universal Design
BC Campus Accessibility Toolkit